Canadian Jewish Outlook, March 1981

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Transplants

Just after the turn of the century, Shmuel received a notice of conscription to fight in the Russo-Japanese war. He and his family lived in Lagov, Poland. Deciding to evade the draft, he fled to Canada, leaving behind his wife Rayzl, two daughters, and an infant son.

After a number of years had gone by he returned to Poland and said, "Pack, Rayzele. You are coming to Canada." Rayzel, not wanting to leave her family and friends, objected "but where will we find a husband for Dvorele in such a strange land?"
"What do you think, Rayzele", her husband scoffed, "that it is a land of savages? There are there too, Jews."

The son, Chaim, was now ten years old and the younger daughter, a marriageable sixteen. An older daughter, herself a mother of several infants, stayed with her husband in Lagov.

Both youngsters were excited about removing to Canada; they had heard villagers referring to the country as the "Goldene Medina" - the land of gold. "and will we be able to pick up gold from the streets?" Chaim marvelled. His sister, though, thought of other matters, of young men more worldly than the ascetic Talmudists and timid tradesmen that inhabited Lagov.

The journey across the Atlantic was a joyless affair. They were forced to spend most of their time ill, in the cramped and poorly-ventilated steerage of the ship, along with other emigrants.

By European standards the family was a small one, and they soon found living space in Toronto with another family, in rented quarters. Shmuel, they discovered, had become a chicken peddler. He owned a horse and cart, and travelling on the perimeter of their new town, he visited a regular circuit of farming communities.

Before long other Lagovers emigrated to Canada. Some to Toronto, where they formed a Lagover Society, a group of people bonded together by a common past and an eager desire to succeed in the new country. From Poland they brought their concept of community life. Life revolved around the shul and the home.

After a few years had elapsed, Shmuel and Rayzel bought a house on Markham Street, just above Dundas Avenue, close to their shul. The house was red-brick, two- storied, attached to a twin, with a wide wooden porch. On the front lawn stood a huge old Catalpa tree; its long finger-shaped pods littered the lawn in the fall. Behind the house stood a roomy barn with a woodshed attached. "There we can keep the horse", Shmuel said to Rayzel. "And in the back you can make for me a vegetable garden", she breathed contentedly.

Chaim began accompanying Shmuel on peddling trips. He learned from his father how to befriend the farmers, how to assess the weight of poultry, how to inspect a flock for illness. By handling a suspicious-looking bird, Chaim learned to determine the manner of its illness and to cull it from the herd. He was shown how to crate the poultry for transport to the co-operative that disposed of the poultry. His father was a share-holder in the co-op, like others of his fellows. "When you learn, when you have your own wagon and route, I will buy you shares", Shmuel assured his son.

Soon a robust young man came calling on Dvore. Her parents had seen his face before at the shul, and friends attested as to his family background. A wedding was discussed.

"But I won't shave my hair off!" Dvore warned her parents. They turned shocked glances on Moishe, her fiance. But he spread his hands good-naturedly and said "here, in this country, it is not seen as an act of impiety".

Rayzele turned to her daughter. "You will shame your husband!"

"Mother", Dvore replied, "who will see me? - the cows?" For it was Moishe's aspiration to become a farmer, an occupation outlawed to Jews in Poland. And with the help of her parents, the young couple bought a farm near Kleinburg, Ontario, and there they began to raise their own family.

In time, apple-cheeked Dvore's hair turned gracefully grey, while her mother, with her deeply-lined face still wore the same brunette peruke.

"This Canada, this country, teaches Chaim bad ways", Rayzele wrung her hands. "V'ays mir!" For his part, Shmuel took more direct action, beating his son for his absences from home. "Hunt! I'm told you like to gamble! How is this, a son should stray so far from custom?" But the boy was growing up, he became fond of expensive clothes, developed a taste for hard liquor and began to avoid synagogue attendance. His absences were a cause for anxious gossip. Shmuel mumbled excuses.

Then a young woman arrived from Poland, with her sister and brother-in-law. The couple started a small kosher butcher business, living above their shop, and the young woman worked at a garment factory on Spadina Avenue.

It wasn't long before Chaim began spending more time at home. The old couple hoped that marriage would reform their wayward son.

"I want a place of my own", Sara said, soon after their marriage. "Your mother watches me all the time. I have no privacy. And anyway, we will need more room soon." Delighted with the news, Chaim rented a set of rooms at Kensington Market, just across the street from where he generally played pinochle, in the back room behind a delicatessen.

Now Shmuel and Rayzele lived alone, without any of their children. they rented out the whole upstairs and kept their front room for entertaining. Dark furniture glistened from constant polishing, and antimacassars lay on the arms of the sofa. When their daughter's children came to visit, they would enjoin them to "study and learn!". With education comes everything", they told the children, convinced of the unlimited opportunities in this land.

Shmuel was now the 'Zayde' and Rayzele was the 'Bubbe' and so they were addressed by their grandchildren. The Zayde continued to go to shul every day, twice a day. And the Bubbe would prepare his tea in a glass with sugar cubes and sliced lemon, served with sugar cookies to refresh him. As his beard grew wispier and whiter, he continued to use a horse and wagon despite the growing use of motor vehicles. As the neighbourhood slowly changed, and a new flood of immigrants took the place of the old, she kept more and more to her house.

By correspondence the old couple learned that their older daughter lived now in Warsaw and her husband had a small mercantile business there. Their children were grown and had graduated from a gymnasia and the boys prepared to enter their father's business. They had felt no interest in emigrating to Canada at the urgings of the old people.

Then it was too late, and the war years permitted little concrete news outside Europe.

Despite that, Chaim worked hard, had bought a truck and developed his own chicken peddling route. Sara found it hard to make ends meet from the meagre dollars he rationed out to her. She often borrowed money from her sister, and her brother-in-law the butcher gave her meat from his store. Chaim refused to eat poultry. "I hate it", he growled. "I ate so much of it at my parents' house, I thought I'd grow feathers and cackle!" But the loans also became gifts; Sara could never manage to pay them back.

Sara never did learn that her husband visited his parents from time to time, whining that bills were due, that his wife over-extended the family's finances. The old couple kept giving their son temporary loans which were also never repaid.

Soon after the birth of her son, Sara took a factory sewing job, leaving the boy in the care of an old woman who lived downstairs in the same building. The old woman would chew up food with her hard gums, then place it in the little boy's mouth. "Eat, my little darling", she would croon to the infant. "Eat, my little orphan."

After a few years, the child, Itchele, learned the short route to his grandparents' home and from the time he was four, he came daily to stay with them, keeping them company. His mother was usually at work and when she was home, had no time for him. He had quickly sensed that Chaim had no use for him. "Out of my way!" was what he heard most commonly from his father.

Entering the house on Markham Street, the little boy would come across his grandmother rolling dough for egg-noodles in the kitchen. "Hi Bubbe", he'd kiss her and ask for his Zayde. She would indicate with her flour-covered hands the door leading to the cellar. On his way downstairs a disembodied voice floating upward would call "Itchoo, are you there?"

Itche watched his Zayde shovel coal into the flaming mouth of the furnace. He'd watch the old man turn a spigot on one of the barrels lining a cellar wall. "Don't you do it, Itchoo, just watch Zayde". He'd watch his Zayde drain off a small amount of the bright liquid and 'test'.

Zayde loved to dig in the backyard, to feel the lumpy dirt in his hands, and Itche dug with him. Zayde enjoyed fresh radishes just pulled out of the dirt and Itche, wrinkling his nose, tried to eat them too, but Zayde said fresh rhubarb sprinkled with sugar was better for little boys.

Rummaging around in the boxes of metal scraps in the shed, Itche would hear the Zayde's horse banging about in its stall. "Itche, be careful, sonele. Don't go behind the horse, no? He might kick you."

Sometimes the old man would encourage Itche to take snuff from a small horn snuff box, its top pulled by a metal ring. "Take! Go ahead, like this - take a little bit - here on your hand." He would show Itche how, saying "it's good to sneeze. It will help you to think better."

The boy went to shul with his grandfather and there the Zayde's landsmen, other old men with long wispy beards and gnarled hands, wearing capel and tallis, would playfully tease the child's cheek. "A sweet child!" They would ruffle their dry hands through his hair and offer him candy.

When the war come to an end, rumour became fact. The rubble of war yielded a relative handful of Jews; former inmates of death camps were removed to displaced-persons camps. There were long waits while enquiries poured in from all over the world; people searching for their relatives and friends.

The Bubbe and Zayde were told by the Jewish Agency that there remained one member of the older daughter's family; the youngest son.

At last, a tearful reunion. Of course, no one recognized anyone else. But Bubbe knew her daughter's son. "You look just like your mother", she said, leaning on the painfully gaunt young man, water welling from her sunken eyes.

The refugee came to live with the old couple, his grandparents, and Itche had to adjust to the idea that he had to share their attention. Bubbe was more demonstrative with the newcomer than anyone had ever seen her before. She stroked his poor thin face and asked him questions about his mother. He pleaded for patience; he wanted to forget his terrible ordeal first. She understood.

The young 'greenie' found a job in the shipping department of a clothing manufacturer. He paid room and board and bought little gifts for the family's children and the Bubbe. They lived this way for years, the young man slowly improving his position, learning English, establishing himself as a garment cutter with the clothing firm.

Once, Itche, soon to be bar-mitzvahed, was scrounging about in the scrap boxes in the cellar. He was alone, had earlier heard his father come into the Bubbe's house. For that reason, he lingered in the cellar, unwilling to go up until his father left. For the first time, Itche overheard his father saying "I need money."

"What for?" his grandfather replied. "We gave you money only last week. From where will we get so much money? We are old people!"

That evening the greenie told the old couple he was not really their daughter's son. He tried to explain to the incredulous old people that all their family had perished. Tried to talk beyond the anguish in their eyes.

"I met your grandson in Auschwitz. He died from starvation. We were part of a work crew." He told them in a barely audible voice that he had taken their grandson's identify and so had made contact with them through the Jewish Agency.

"I needed a sponsor, don't you see?" he begged. "I couldn't stay there any longer! I felt I was going crazy, don't you understand? I wanted a chance to live!" He told them he loved them, he would do anything for them.

Silent at first,her grey face stricken, the Bubbe succumbed to a new grief. The Zayde had compassion, would have forgiven, but the Bubbe would not be moved. She hated the young man now with the burning passion she had reserved for her family's slaughterers. Her shrieking curses followed him out the door of her house.

No one was allowed to speak his name again.

Life carried on. Their backs became more stooped, their chests hollow. Their voices faltered; they were less likely now to smile, to laugh.

At Itche's wedding the old couple walked haltingly down the aisle, leaning on each other, to sit before the wedding canopy. The Zayde cut the huge challah with his trembling hands and the tiny pieces were handed out traditionally, to all the guests.

When they could no longer look after their house, Itche drove them out to live on their daughter's farm. But because they were so frail, before long a family council decided they would be better off in a home for the aged. They were moved back to the city, where they shared a room in a huge new building that housed aged residents.

One of the daily newspapers in Toronto did a cover story on the old-age home. A big photograph of the Bubbe and the Zayde headed the story. Her head lay inclined toward his chest. His arm hung protectively over her shoulder. Her wig was still dark, a kerchief was tied jauntily under her chin.

In the picture, they were smiling.

c. 1981 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Canadian Jewish Outlook, Vol.19, No.3